


the secret life of steve rogers and sergeant barnes

by hiljainen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1940s, 1950s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Dancing, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Letters, M/M, Memory Loss, Military Homophobia, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Recovery, Top Steve Rogers, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22114048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiljainen/pseuds/hiljainen
Summary: Steam and smoke clouded the air as the train began to creak and groan into life. Steve's heart was thudding just as loud. He couldn't breathe, but it didn't seem to matter.Bucky's voice barely reached him, over it all. "Don't do anything stupid till I get back!""How can I?" Steve couldn't even hear himself speak. Tried anyway. Yelled like his life depended on it. "You're taking all the stupid with you."On Bucky’s last night, they go dancing.The lives of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes during and after World War II, in an AU where Bucky is drafted into the army, but Steve never meets Dr. Erskine and never gets the super soldier serum.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 49
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Bucky's last night, they go dancing.

He was staring down another recruitment poster when Bucky nudged his shoulder. "Hey. Ready to go? The girls are keen to make a move." 

Steve glanced past him, to where Rebecca and the woman who was her friend in the same way Bucky was his were waiting, arm in arm, hand over hand. He looked back up at Bucky, who still stood just a little awkward in his stiff starch uniform, who looked at him with pleading in his soft doe eyes, already, before Steve had even said anything. 

"Look, I just want--" he started.

But, "Steve, please," Bucky cut him off, pushing that look a notch further. Big eyes, creased brow, mouth turned down and imploring. He'd always been horrible at keeping his feelings off his face. So much so that sometimes, unfairly, Steve could hardly bear to look at him. "Please don't do this now. Not tonight."

"Buck, for God's sake. _You're_ going. What the hell right do I have to stay here?" 

"Exactly. I'm _going_." Bucky's fingers were digging into his shoulder. "First thing tomorrow. This is our last night. Please, Steve, please, would you just spend it with me? You can try again another day, hell, you can try again in the morning if you really gotta. Just not tonight."

He looked so sad. He looked so _young_. Steve looked at him, really looked at him, and realised just how young he seemed in that uniform. Like a little boy playing make-believe in his father's clothes. 

"Stevie. It's my last night." The way he said _last_ , the weight in it, put a cold kind of fear into Steve's soul, suddenly. He said it like he meant more than just his last night in Brooklyn, last night before he went away. He said it with a kind of anxious finality, like he meant his last night on Earth, his last night alive, his last night ever. Steve tried to shake off the feeling, but it wouldn't go. 

"Alright," he said, pushing Bucky's hand gently off his shoulder as an excuse to touch him. "Alright. Where are we going?" 

There was relief in Bucky's smile, the way his shoulders sagged just slightly. Gratitude, too, that Steve wasn't sure he deserved. "Sands Street?" he said, with his voice a little lowered. "The girls wanna dance." 

Steve half-rolled his eyes as he let Bucky lead him out of the booth. He could feel Uncle Sam's gaze drilling into the back of his head, feel his pointing finger jabbing between his shoulder-blades, and stepped in a little closer to Bucky's side. "Bucky, you know I can't." 

"Don't worry, don't worry," Bucky told him, with a conspiratorial lean that briefly brought their shoulders together. "I'll lead." 

-

Inside the bar was dim and warm and loud, as always, but the atmosphere wasn't quite the same. Rebecca and her gal Susie weren't quite so outnumbered as usual, being women. The crowd was still mostly guys, but the ratio was a little closer to being even, and nobody was wondering why.

"Hey," Steve said, at the nebulous half-shouting volume required for making himself heard over the noise, but only to Bucky. "That guy stole your outfit." 

So had close to half the other guys in there, too. Everywhere he looked there was another man in uniform. Steve realised with a lurch that there was a good chance Bucky might see any one of them again sooner than he saw him. He reached for Bucky's hand, almost snatched it, and held tight as he pulled him through the room. 

"You want a drink?" Bucky called, gesturing as he did, for Steve's sake - his hearing was fuzzy enough as it was without swing jazz being played loud enough to carry halfway down the street. 

"No, I'm buying." Steve shook his head, "Go on and dance already." 

Bucky didn't argue, but looked at him a long moment before he let Rebecca take his arm and coax him towards the floor.

Once he actually reached the bar Steve found himself wondering, not for the first time in his life, why he'd let bravado make him insist on going instead of Bucky. He didn't exactly have the easiest time getting bartenders' attention, especially when he faced the dual task of avoiding being stepped on or swept away by the other, on average considerably larger, patrons. At least he had the attitude for it, and eventually managed to elbow his way into a space along the bar where he could still keep half an eye on Bucky while he waited.

Bucky was doing his best to dance with both Rebecca and Susie - or Rebecca and Susie were being kind enough to do their best to both dance with him instead of each other. Steve liked to watch him move better than he liked having to make his own miserable, uncoordinated attempts at dancing himself. Even with Bucky as a partner, leading, he struggled to follow the most basic steps - it made him feel clumsy and stupid and it felt like such a waste, when Bucky was so quick and graceful on his own, or with anyone else. He made it look so effortless, dancing, and the way it put a smile on his face and colour in his cheeks, he made it look like it should be exhilarating. Or at the very least a good time. 

"You know him?" 

It took Steve a moment to realise he was being spoken to. He glanced up at the face of the man beside him at the bar, followed his gaze to where Bucky was lifting Becca shoulder-high and spinning her, and making it look like he'd been born doing it. He nodded, distracted.

"You know if he's free tonight?" 

Steve looked up again sharply. His heart had given an uncomfortable little jolt that he wouldn't have known to expect - he'd been jealous before, naturally, couldn't imagine anyone else in his place wouldn't be, but he felt it uncommonly keenly, then. His no sounded hard. 

His new rival for Bucky's affections seemed less concerned. Mildly disappointed, maybe. "Oh? Oh. He's your fella?" 

He's more than that, Steve thought, with a fierceness that bordered on anger. "Yeah," he said, "He's with me." 

The guy's gaze travelled up and down the modest height of him, and Steve could practically hear what he was thinking. You? Someone that pretty, with you? Someone that pretty in a sergeant's uniform, and he came here with you? 

Before he could turn the situation into some kind of trouble, the barman was back with Bucky's beer and Steve's whisky. He threw his down in one and left the glass on the bar, and put a whole lot of concentration into not stumbling as he moved away. 

When Bucky saw him coming he detached himself from the girls and headed Steve's way, grinning all pink and sweet and bright eyed. "Where's yours?" he asked, as he took his drink. 

"Drank it," Steve said, and put his hands on Bucky's arms, leaned up on his toes, and kissed him. It wasn't for the man at the bar, but Steve hoped he saw. Hoped he saw the way Bucky leaned into him, the hand he pressed to the small of his back, the glow in his face when he stepped back.

"What was that for?" he asked, blushing over the rim of his beer glass. 

"I need a reason?" 

Bucky laughed at the look on his face and the sound went straight to Steve's chest, found a space behind his ribs, beside his heart, and stayed there. When Bucky got on his train in the morning it would be weeks till Steve heard that sound again, it could be months. 

"No," he said, and he was looking at him in that _way_ , that way he had, that way Steve had never seen him look at anyone else ever, only at him - head a little way to one side, smile and eyes so soft, so so soft. "Guess not." 

For a brief fleeting moment Steve wanted to tell him not to go. To stay at least until he could follow him. 

"You comin' or what?" Bucky gestured with a nod of his head to the swaying crowd of bodies dancing around them. It took Steve a beat before he remembered how to answer. 

"With a song this fast? I'd probably break my neck," he said, and watched disappointment crumple Bucky's smooth brow underneath the peak of his cap. "I'll come when they play somethin' slow," he promised, quickly before Bucky could argue, because it was hard enough already, saying no to him when he was looking like that. Part of Steve was already wondering what the hell was the matter with him, to be denying Bucky anything at all tonight. But just because it was his last night didn't mean Steve would've suddenly grown the ability to dance. Didn't work like that. "Somethin' slow and easy." 

"You mean it?" Bucky asked.

When you push your bottom lip out like that I wanna sink my teeth into it, Steve thought.

"I mean it," he said. 

\- 

They danced together when the music turned slow, like Steve promised. They were both a little drunk by then, Bucky maybe more so - hard to tell. All around them bodies came together in twos and began to sway, slow and easy and natural, converging like a river. Steve watched them from the wall at first, a little apprehensive, couldn't help it, till he saw Bucky looking at him in that way - not outright asking, but wanting, so bad. 

"Come on, then," he said, laying a hand on Bucky's shoulder, stepping close so they were almost toe to toe. His heart felt high in his chest, like it was trying to make its way up into his throat. "You lead." 

Bucky took Steve's hand in his own, held it carefully. The other found his waist, pressed in, so Steve could feel it, just at the base of his ribs. "It's easy," he told him, so soft it was a strain to hear him, but Steve didn't want to ask him to speak louder. Better like this, with his words, his voice, for Steve alone. "You just gotta step like I step." 

As he spoke he began to move, so slowly Steve could've missed it if he'd blinked. Small, swaying steps. Steve lowered his eyes to watch his feet, to try to move his own the same way. Bucky's dress shoes were shined up real nice. His hand at Steve's waist was coaxing gently, trying to get him to loosen up. Steve could tell he was being stiff, awkward, especially next to Bucky's smooth easy flow - when there was music playing it was almost like it flowed into him, somehow, he moved so well with it. Never a beat out of place. Steve was the opposite, and the whole thing was even harder with whisky blurring the edges of his already awful vision, but he was trying. 

"That's it," Bucky murmured, and when Steve looked up from his own slow careful steps, the look on his face almost knocked the breath out of him. He was looking at Steve so intensely, with such singular focus - not like he was the only thing that existed, but like he was the most important one. Like he was trying real hard to memorise him. Bucky's eyes shone, dark and damp and beautiful in the low light. His fingers were curled tight in Steve's jacket. "You're doin' real good, baby." 

"Bucky," Steve said, around the lump that had risen into his throat. He took his hand from Bucky's shoulder and touched his cheek, and felt the tension in his face, in his jaw, that he held there when he was trying not to cry. Bucky smiled, but it trembled. 

"Thank you, Stevie," he said, and his voice trembled too. "For doin' this with me." 

Steve could hear how drunk he was, then, in the slight slur that pulled at his words, see it in the shadow of colour across his cheeks, feel it in the heat of his skin. "You don't gotta thank me, Buck," he told him, gently as he could. Bucky didn't seem to hear it.

"Might not get another chance," he said, and then his smile lost its grip and fell, his mouth opened to suck in a breath. Steve slipped his hand to the back of his neck and brought his head to his shoulder. They swayed, still, their hands clasped, still, high by their shoulders. Steve couldn't bring himself to let go. Bucky pressed his face into the curve of Steve's neck, and he felt the collar of his shirt grow warm and wet, and closed his eyes tight.

-

The walk home felt long and strange. It made Steve anxious that they weren't touching, and the feeling evidently was mutual; Bucky brushed against him every chance he got, tripped into him or grabbed for his arm under the pretence of keeping himself steady. Steve took and gave what he could - a hand on his arm, on his shoulder, on his waist. Sands Street wasn't the worst place, for getting caught like that, but it was late, and nowhere was exactly safe. 

As soon as the door closed behind them they were on each other, keys still rattling in the lock. Bucky fell back against the frame, drink making him clumsy now he wasn't dancing, and knocked the cap off his head. His hands were on Steve's waist, clutching fistfuls of his jacket, kneading the fabric in his fingers. Steve took him by his stupid stiff lapels and kissed him hard, kissed the taste of tears and whisky off his tongue, kissed him till he moaned soft and helpless into Steve's mouth. 

It was a pain trying to get his hand inside that goddamned uniform. Steve wrestled one-handed with the belt round Bucky's middle, the other occupied with keeping his fingers curled tight in his hair, keeping their mouths crushed together. Bucky was no help, didn't seem to be physically capable of letting go of Steve's waist. His full focus was on kissing Steve with everything he had, breathing heavy, making these high, needy little noises that were sweet enough Steve couldn't mind. With the belt at least half out of the way he forced the bottom button of Bucky's uniform jacket through its hole, almost tearing it, and then he could get his fingers on the fastenings of his pants. 

Steve pressed his hand between Bucky's legs. He was half-hard already, and he was easy when he was drunk, more so even than he usually was, for Steve. He got his flies open, and Bucky's hips rocked forward, teeth cutting into Steve's lip. Steve bit him back, gently, and took his hand away.

"Turn around," he murmured, and Bucky pulled back just enough to look at him. Eyes heavy lidded, hair across his brow, mouth dark and swollen and open. 

"Here?" he asked. His voice was rough, and sweet. 

Steve didn't answer. He put his hands on Bucky's hips and turned him, gently. Bucky steadied himself best he could against the wall, put his brow to the wood. Steve laid his palm on the small of his back and felt him trembling.

The Vaseline was in the bedroom and Steve didn't feel like stepping away from Bucky even for a second, so he spat into his hand once he'd worked the waistband of Bucky's trousers down beneath his ass. At the sound of it Bucky quivered; Steve hushed him softly, and shoved his hand up under that stupid jacket to stroke his spine as he pushed his fingers into him. 

Bucky reacted beautifully, like always, and Steve took extra care to pay attention to every single goddamn detail. To the furnace heat of him inside, past the muscle which stretched and tightened; to the way he lifted just slightly onto his toes, making Steve follow his body with his hand; to the soft, fractured sound that came from the back of his mouth.

For those first moments Steve went slow. Worked his fingers carefully, mindful that it would pinch a little more with just spit. But he was mindful, too, that time wasn't on their side. All they had was tonight. His heart fluttered sickly. This was all they were going to get, for a long while. 

That was as long as bore thinking about: for a while. This was all they were going to get for a while, they were going to be apart for a while, miss each other for a while. But this was not their last time. Bucky was going to come back to him. 

"Steve," he sighed, soft and sibilant into the back of his arm. 

Steve pushed his fingers in harder, right in deep as they'd go, and felt Bucky jolt and groan. He pressed closer to him, hips shifting with the movement of his wrist - slid his hand around over his stomach where his muscles were held taut and tense, up to his chest where he laid his palm flat. The fabric of Bucky's shirt was rucked up in the crook of Steve's elbow. Getting in the way, but less so than stopping to strip it off would. His fingers found a nipple, pinched hard enough to make Bucky squirm and press back into his hand, harder, till he made a sound. _"Steve,"_ again, craning back towards him, eyes closed mouth open lips wet. 

It wouldn't be enough. Steve had made Bucky come with just his fingers before but that was when they had time, when he could spend a while on it, working him up and working him open, slow and careful, making him shudder and fuck his hips up into nothing - even, now and then, making him plead. When he came like that it was always gasping, wide-eyed, his face opening into this look of disbelief that was almost innocent - it would leave him boneless and laughing and a little shy, and Steve smug and pleased. 

It wouldn't be enough, though, right then, right there. So Steve got down on his knee, half on his haunches to give himself enough height, and pushed his tongue in alongside his fingers. Bucky jerked, made a sound that was all breath and fricative, something like _fffuh_ \-- Steve moved lower, dragged a long slow lick along the soft place where Bucky's thighs became his body. Musk and sweat rich on his tongue, in his nose, the smell that was so strongly _Bucky_ , his skin, his soap, him, just him. Steve curled his fingers inside Bucky's body, curled the others into the top of his thigh. He'd appreciated it before, always, but never enough, he realised, never _enough_ when he'd half-thought there'd always be more whenever he wanted.

"Jesus _fuck, baby,_ " Bucky was groaning, pushing back against him, reaching back to grab at Steve's hair, hold him. His voice pitched up with each word out of him. "Steve, ah, God, if you don't stop I'm gonna, I'm, aw, fuck, sweetheart, I--" 

With a sharp gasp he tightened, clenched - his body bore down onto Steve's fingers, then lifted, trying to take him with him as his hips strained forward. Steve followed, ignored the ache in his knees as he pushed himself to his feet and lined up along Bucky's back, got his arms around him as he shuddered and sank against the wall, breathing hard, shoulders bowed. The muscles in his legs were twitching. Better get him to bed, before they gave out altogether. No way Steve could hold his weight, as badly as he wanted to. 

"C'mere, Buck," Steve told him, breathless himself, gently stroking Bucky's hair back from his brow. After a moment just recovering himself Bucky turned in his embrace, unsteady, clutching at Steve's shoulders. 

"What'd you do that for," he mumbled, lip pushed out, thoroughly bitten by now, by both of them. His knee nudged between Steve's thighs, feeling for him. Always took longer for Steve to get hard, and he never lasted as long, either, had no damn stamina, but he was more than half-way there by now and the brush of Bucky's leg was enough to make his stomach clench. "You haven't..."

Steve touched his cheek, hushing him, spoke softly. "You think I'm done with you already?" 

-

In the bedroom Steve switched the wireless on, turned up the sound of static so they wouldn't have to worry about the thin walls.

Splayed out on the sheets with his uniform half undone, half debauched already, Bucky was an angel; he was a god; he was more beautiful than anything any one of the masters had ever created in marble or with a brush, and Steve would know, he'd studied them. He crawled up over him, planted one knee either side of his waist and kissed him, holding his face in both hands, feeling him shiver beneath him. 

"Alright, pal?" he murmured, and Bucky laughed, because Steve had called him pal, even though _you just had your tongue in my ass, Steve, for the love of..._

"Yeah," he said, warm and soft and just a little slurred, his hands on Steve's back, a little uncoordinated as he shucked up his jacket, tried to tug his shirt out from where it was tucked in to his pants. "Yeah, sweetheart." 

When he leant up Steve bent down to him and they met in the middle, kissed for what felt like a long, long time, while Bucky fiddled with his buttons. 

"You managin' there?" Steve asked, nipping at his jaw. He was trying not to be impatient, but there was a feeling in his stomach like it, like urgency and bad nerves; he wasn't sure if it was adding to the arousal or fighting against it.

"Cut me some slack, I'm workin' on five beers and an orgasm, here." 

Bucky got his shirt open, finally, unhooked his suspenders with his thumbs and lay there gazing at him for a moment, mouth open, cheeks dark. Steve had given up a long time ago on trying to insist that he was nothing worth looking at, because Bucky never stopped looking. Still wondered sometimes, though, what Bucky saw in him, to put that look on his face at moments like this. 

"You'll catch flies," he told him, and covered his mouth with his own. Sucked at his lip as he shoved his shirt the rest of the way off and got to work on Bucky's - his stupid jacket with its buttons like brass doorknobs, his carefully knotted tie. Bucky's hands were getting restless, grabbing at Steve's ass, palming his chest. Beneath him he was rocking gently, little un-conscious nudges of his hips - half-hard again already, god damn, he was going to have the recovery time of a teenager for his whole life, Steve would bet on it. 

"Get this off," he said with a tug to Bucky's shirt, and slid back, rearranged himself so he was kneeling between his thighs instead of atop them. 

"Yessir." Bucky touched two fingers to his temple, half a salute with half a grin, and with the uniform still on him - Steve didn't know what the feeling was that put into his stomach. Didn't want to think about it too much either. 

There was a chill in the apartment but there was whisky in Steve's blood and the heat of Bucky's body to warm him still, and the rest of their clothes went quickly.

Bucky's skin was dark from the bridge of his nose into his cheeks down his neck, pooling in the dip of his throat, hot across his chest, and Steve wished fleetingly that he could properly see the colour of it - never mind, he followed it with his mouth instead, head bowed, hands spread over the fluttering expanse of his ribcage. The backs of Bucky's thighs rested over the top of Steve's, ankles crossed behind him, a pillow haphazardly wedged under his back to get the angle just right. 

His breathing hitched when Steve slipped his fingers over him, where he was extra tender now, twice as sensitive; the reason why was staining the hem of his nice sergeant's jacket on the floor somewhere. Bucky fisted a hand in Steve's hair, and the other around his dick, dug his heels in, needy: _hurry the hell up._ A little kick of anxiety, twin urges to go fast and slow down tugged at him at once. Bucky tugged the hardest, though, and Steve had never been able to resist giving him what he wanted, in the end. 

Bucky's body yielded to him sweet and welcoming. The sound he made was cracked, needy, as his head fell back heavy against the mattress. Steve breathed out slow through his teeth, held himself taut, as the heat of Bucky enveloping him threatened to overwhelm. He was shaking, they both were. It was always intense, this, but tonight - there weren't words. 

"Easy, pal," Steve murmured, uneven, as Bucky arched and tried to pull him in further. He put a hand over his cock where it lay full and leaking on Bucky's belly, gave a gentle squeeze and felt his groan, and the clench of his whole body. Gritted his teeth as it made his stomach tense and his dick twitch. "Wanna make this last." 

They did. By the time Bucky came, first, they were the both of them exhausted, damp with sweat, shaking with the strain of it. He finished Steve off with his mouth, insisted on it, crawled between his legs and looked up at him with his heavy-lidded half-moon eyes and murmured _I wanna remember what you taste like,_ sounding wrecked, and Steve had barely lasted two seconds after that. The look on Bucky's face, he burned it into his memory. 

Something to think about if he got lonely while he was away. Just until he saw it again. 

-

"I love you."

There were tears running down Bucky's cheeks. Pooling in his ears, spilling over to make puddles in the pillowcase. Each time Steve kissed them away more took their place. 

"I know. I know, Buck, I know."

"So much, Stevie." 

His voice was thick, choked. He held Steve's hand so tight he was pretty sure he'd still be feeling it in the morning. Hoped he would.

"I know. I know. I love you too." 

-

In the morning Steve watched Bucky button himself back up into that uniform. Bruises in the shape of Steve's mouth disappeared under his shirt and tie; he paused to touch one on the curve of his collarbone, a little gingerly, like it was still tender. Good. 

"You left marks." Usually Bucky's voice would be smug or scolding, depending on his mood; right now it was more like plaintive. "What am I gonna say if someone sees?" 

Steve stepped up close to him, fit his mouth to the mark again, kissed it softly. Felt Bucky's chest flutter just a little. "You'll just have to say your sweetheart left 'em."

"My sweetheart, huh?" 

"That's right." 

Bucky's hands went into his hair, settled at the nape of his neck. Steve's went to finish doing up the buttons of his shirt, straighten the knot of his tie, push it up so it sat nicely at his throat. 

"Steve," he said, after a moment, quiet. When he looked up Bucky's face was tense, jaw tight. The lines beneath his eyes were deep, darkened by the late night and not enough sleep, and his gaze was low, fixed on some place between their bodies. Steve stilled his hands, waited. Eventually, in a whisper: "I don't wanna go." 

He sounded like a child. He sounded so afraid. So afraid it quelled the edge of jealousy Steve felt, put paid to any hint of disapproval. He knew Bucky was far from any kind of coward. He'd seen him throw punches in back alleys twice as often as he'd seen him in a ring; he'd seen him black eyes and burst mouths and break noses, and almost always for Steve's sake. But now, he was afraid.

"Well." Steve gave his tie a last little nudge, smoothed down his collar. His mouth felt dry, his throat obstructed. "I do, so... how about you lend me the uniform and I'll go instead." Glancing up, he caught the hint of a smile in the corners of Bucky's mouth, though he was still staring at the floor. "Sure they'd never notice the difference." 

"Y'think?" His voice was small.

"Sure." Steve straightened his shoulders, lifted his chest, made his face serious. "Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th, reporting for duty," he said, in a hopeless impression of Bucky's voice. Hopeless, but it earned a laugh, at least, if a small one. 

"Yeah, real convincing." Bucky squeezed his shoulder before letting his hands fall. Steve watched his gaze stray to the clock on the side. 

"Ready to go?" 

Bucky nodded. Swallowed hard, set his jaw. His eyes, as they met Steve's, had a look in them unlike anything he'd seen there before. A chill on his skin. "Yeah." 

-

The train station was flooded, a sea of uniform after uniform, dotted throughout with mothers, wives, fathers, friends, well-wishers and mourners-to-be. Bucky moved through them with tight shoulders and a kind of nervous singularity. The taste of Steve's mouth was still in his. Now and then the crowd nudged them together, and their knuckles brushed. 

"Guess this is it," he said, gaze flicking to some spot past Steve's shoulder, when his luggage was loaded and the whistle was being blown and he was still standing there, tense, on the platform, just by the door. 

Steve nodded. Found he couldn't do much else. His hands were in fists by his sides, his back was aching with holding himself so straight, and with holding himself apart from Bucky, when he was about to be gone. Bucky's hands were the same; Steve watched them flex, flounder. At last he reached out, clapped Steve on the shoulder. Left his hand there, clinging on. 

"I'll see you," he said, finding Steve's eyes again. There was that tension in his jaw. Steve nodded. It felt like his mouth was stuck shut.

The whistle blew again, piercing. It made Bucky flinch, just a little, around the eyes. Like it was hurting him, he let Steve go, and stepped up through the door. 

It seemed to clatter shut so loudly it was as if the sound were inside Steve's skull. He watched it close, and that was when the panic seized him, shook him out of the numb mute disbelief that had been holding him, the vague inability to accept that this was really happening, that Bucky was really going, until he was gone.

He was gone. 

"Hey, Rogers!"

Steve spun on his heel. Bucky had appeared at the window of the carriage nearest, and as Steve watched he shoved it as far open as it would go so he could lean half out. He was grinning; his eyes were damp. Half falling over himself in the rush Steve went to him, shoved his way past all the others trying to do the same. Bucky's hand stretched out, and Steve surged up and seized it with both of his own. Caution to the wind. If anyone asked, he'd say they were brothers. 

Not that anyone was looking, anyway. Every other person on that platform had their own heartbreak to worry about. 

Steam and smoke clouded the air as the train began to creak and groan into life. Steve's heart was thudding just as loud. He couldn't breathe, but it didn't seem to matter.

Bucky's voice barely reached him, over it all. "Don't do anything stupid till I get back!" 

"How can I?" Steve couldn't even hear himself speak. Tried anyway. Yelled like his life depended on it. "You're taking all the stupid with you." 

He saw Bucky's laughter, desperate and bittersweet. He clung to his hand for as long as he could, until the train pulled them apart, and even then Steve chased after him till he disappeared, and his chest ached, like his lungs were going to give out. 


	2. letters, vol. I

_Steve,_

_I'm on a train in Europe and I can't sleep. I can't say where we're going but we'll be there in the morning and that's when the real shit starts, so I'm told. Bet you can tell how excited I am._

_Bet you're a little jealous, too. It's okay, admit it. I know you are. But I got to say, Steve, there's not that much to be jealous of, at least so far. The food is god damned awful and there's not a dame in sight. When you write me back, send chocolate._

_You better be taking care of yourself, pal, and my sisters. I told Becca to keep an eye on you for me so you better not be making her job too difficult._

_Are you missing me yet?_

_Don't forget the chocolate._

_Your Bucky_

_-_

_Bucky,_

_You're kidding yourself if you think that if I had chocolate, I'd be sending it to you. I'm still flat broke even if I'm not buying your beers anymore._

_The girls are well. I think they're excited to have the extra space in the house and one less person giving out to them for cursing. Ally's been sleeping in your bed, Becca says. She probably told you herself. Susie says hello, too. Says she's keeping a count of the dances you owe her._

_Missing you? I'm enjoying the peace and quiet without you._

_Don't win the war till I get there._

_Yours,_  
_Steve_

_-_

_Steve,_

_Thanks for the chocolate, and the smokes. You're a real pal._

_This place is pretty beautiful, the parts that haven't been shelled beyond recognition, at least. Can't say where, though. Can't say much, really. This last week's been some kind of awful but I can't say why. I'm glad you're not here, though. Don't take that the wrong way. I can see you glaring at me right now. It's just good to know you're back home and you're safe. Well, safe as a guy who likes getting punched as much as you do can be._

_How are you managing your back alley brawling habit without me? Hope you've still got all your teeth. You should think about joining the Y. Someone's gotta be their new champ while I'm away._

_Say yes when my ma asks you for dinner. Don't you let her down._

_Your Bucky_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is at war.
> 
> Steve meets a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for implied sexual assault in this chapter - nothing graphic happens, but it is suggested.

Bucky was a good soldier in a long list of ways. His aim was exceptional and his hands, for the most part, were steady. He followed orders with only minor bristling and gave them with confidence and clarity; he was cocksure enough to stand up to his COs now and then but smart enough to stand down most of the time.

Thing was, though, he was scared, and he couldn't keep it off his face.

"You look worried, Barnes." His staff sergeant spoke to him in a low sneer.

His squad was camped out in the dark green depths of some forest in Austria, on a night that was humid and close, listening to shells falling maybe a mile off, and shit, Bucky thought, we all look worried. Those who didn't looked dazed, or distant.

"I am a little worried, sir."

This staff sergeant in particular didn't deal too well with tension, in Bucky's opinion. He gathered it up and vented it onto his men, ribbed and wheedled at them, wanted everyone in the vicinity to be in just as foul a mood as he was, to be coping just as badly. For a while Bucky made attempts at diffusing him, until the guy struck him in the face one afternoon for suggesting he take a few deep breaths. He couldn't go starting fights in front of his men, so he'd left it there.

"What's your problem, Barnes? Why d'you look so afraid all the time?"

He carried it in his jaw, and shoulders; he carried it around his eyes. Sometimes the fear wound him so tense it made his head ache, throbbed in the bones of his face.

"I guess I am afraid, sir."

A month or two ago, or back in boot camp, and the men who were close enough to hear might've laughed at him for that. Not now. Now they all were, and they all knew it, and Bucky was pretty sure it just made them nervous that he was willing to admit it.

"What are you afraid of, Barnes?"

The staff sergeant was making steady progress into Bucky's personal space, close enough that he could smell the rationed tot of cheap whisky on him. He refused to blink. He stared off past his shoulder, into the dark. Steve had tasted of whisky, when he'd kissed him last. He ran his tongue over his teeth sometimes, when he was trying to fall asleep, and tried to remember it exactly.

"I'm afraid of being shot, sir, or blown up, or otherwise killed out here, and never making it home."

His voice was even, and steady, and sounded like someone else's. For a long moment the staff sergeant's eyes bored into the side of his face, before he scoffed, muttered something about taking a piss, and moved away.

Bucky breathed out through his nose and tried to will some of the tension out of his body with it. No luck. After a minute Gabe appeared beside him, passed him a lit cigarette. Bucky inhaled, gratefully, then looked at him - raised a brow. "Where the hell'd you get Lucky Strikes?"

Gabe's grin was all teeth. He tapped the side of his nose. "I got ways."

They were quiet for a moment, passing the smoke back and forth. The sound of the distant shelling had begun to die down, lessen in frequency; it could almost be mistaken for thunder, now.

"So." Gabe broke what passed, there, for silence. "You got someone waitin' for you, at home? Someone to get back to?"

Bucky pulled, long and slow, on the dregs of the cigarette. When they were teenagers he used to breathe smoke into Steve's mouth from his own. Used to pretend it was easier on Steve's lungs. It had just been an excuse to let their lips brush.

"Yeah," he said, passing the last little bit back. "I got a family."

"Married?"

Bucky almost laughed. Almost said, sometimes it feels like it. Almost said, I wish, pal, but they don't let guys like me do that. "Nah. Three sisters. Two little, one big." And the love of my life.

A noise of something like sympathy from Gabe. The faint, faint fizzle of the cigarette dying in the mud under his boot.

"They're alright, my ma's still around, I just... hell, she won't be forever, and I -" He shrugged. "Alice, the littlest one, she's only nine. I don't want - don't wanna die without gettin' to see her grow up."

After a moment's companionable, understanding silence: "So, three sisters, but what, no sweetheart? You tellin' me you ain't got a girl back home pining after you, hangin' on to every word of every letter?"

Gabe's tone was light, and combined with the elbow he nudged into Bucky's ribs it was enough to make him smile. _Sweetheart_. The marks on his collarbone were long faded, but he could still hear that in Steve's accent, softened consonants and long vowels. Not a girl, he thought, no, but I sure as hell got a sweetheart. So sweet you wouldn't believe it, a real doll.

"Nah," he started, "nah, I -"

He was interrupted by a blast that threw the both of them face-first into the dirt.

-

They made it, just barely.

Bucky didn’t shake until afterwards. The gun resting against his shoulder was steady; his finger on the trigger was steady; his aim was straight. He put bullets between the eyes of the men trying to kill him and didn’t think about whether that made him just as bad as them until afterwards.

They’d holed up in the shell of a dilapidated farm building that was being used as storage for the camp - it wasn’t the sturdiest but it was the closest cover they could get that wasn’t just trees or the canvas of their tents. And it had a window, high up enough to make a decent vantage point, small enough not to leave Bucky too vulnerable when he hunkered down behind it, with his gun and his steady hands.

Soldiers poured from the trees like water, felling in moments any man unfortunate enough to be at the camp’s edge. Bucky just got lucky, being in the right place, him and Gabe and those others who made it into the safety of the building. And then from his perch Bucky sharpened his gaze and picked them off, their attackers, identified those who were doing the most damage and one by one made them stop, while the others lay down their fury by poking the muzzles of their machine-guns through holes in the building’s dusty brick walls, by sending hand-grenades hurtling through the window over Bucky’s shoulders. 

He’d never been able to imagine firing so wildly like that, at anything. Barely aiming, barely even thinking. Just wanting to destroy anything in front of you. There was so much risk to it. Through his scope he watched his own men fall, impossible to tell whence came the bullets that brought them down. Certain only that they weren’t his own. Certain that was the only thing he would be able to tell himself, later, to help him sleep at night. If he made it to the night.

Which he did, just barely.

He heard someone scream it out before he saw it: there was a tank crawling along the dirt track toward them. A relatively little thing as tanks went but a monster compared to the men scrambling to get away from it. It took out the wall right beside him and for one long minute he was left deaf and blind from the impact. Too much dust to see, the blast too loud to remember what anything else had ever sounded like. For one long minute Bucky didn’t even exist.

Luck – it was nothing but luck. He got lucky. Lucky that he was in the right place and armed with the right rifle, lucky that the guy driving the Panzer was stupid enough to pop the lid and poke his head out, clutching a grenade – what for? He was sitting in what was essentially a giant inpenetrable gun, so what for? To see men die a little more up-close? – lucky that all he had to do was line up and squeeze a trigger and that grenade dropped neatly out of the dead man’s hand and back into the body of the tank.

Didn’t make a dent on the bodywork, but everything stilled quite suddenly. A plume of dark smoke issued from the hatch.

And _then_ he shook, when the firing stopped, but the screams and the wailing didn’t. He could hear it under the ringing in his ears. The sound of men in pain. Of men dying. Bucky’s fingers were stiff around the metal of his gun; an ache was setting in and all at once he couldn’t imagine ever being able to let go of it. It was as if he couldn’t remember how.

“Hey.”

There was a voice by his shoulder and his whole body jolted in one sudden sharp burst of panic. He met Gabe’s gaze with his eyes wide and his heart in his throat, his chest tight like his ribs were caving in. Gabe backed off a little, expression apologetic, as the fear began to fade almost as quickly as it had come.

“It’s clear now, Sarge. Down there.”

He paused, waiting patiently for Bucky to show some sign of recognition. 

“So we can head out.”

For some reason his voice hurt, when he finally found it. “Yeah. Alright.”

Gabe looked at him just a moment longer before he left the room. Another moment passed before Bucky was able to force himself to put his gun down and follow.

-

“They’ll give you a medal for that,” someone was telling him, as he set unsteady foot out of the ruined building, into the carnage that surrounded it. “Oughta get a medal. Fuckin’ bullseye, man, fuckin’ bullseye.”

Bucky thought he managed to mutter something back but wasn’t quite sure. Didn’t matter much anyway; whoever it was jostled past him after a brief clap on his shoulder (that made his chest clench) and moved on. The air was thick and grey with gunpowder and dust and dirt. So was his skin, he realised, when he went to wipe his stinging eyes and looked down to find his fingers filthy.

The camp - what remained of it - had descended into chaos again, those still standing running from wounded body to wounded body. Calling orders over the calling of dying men for their mothers, for help, for mercy. Bucky turned and, leaning against the doorframe, threw up where he stood. Barely missed his own boots. Nobody paid him any attention. It made him feel a little better, at least. Better enough to straighten his back, step out onto the field, and go back to doing what he had to.

-

"How many times have you tried this, son?"

Steve breathed in, then out, slowly. It wasn't the cool air on his bare skin that was responsible for the sinking chill in his stomach, then. It was the dull, miserable familiarity in those words. In the stern, disconcertingly paternal stare the recruitment officer levelled at him.

"I don't know what you mean, sir."

"Providing false information on your enlistment forms is illegal."

At least he didn't pussyfoot around it. Some of them did, spoke in heavy hints and pointed eye contact, like they were doing Steve some kind of favour.

"You could get into serious trouble if you try this again. I'm doing you a favour, son." There it was. "Now do yourself one, too. Find another way to help the war effort. There's plenty of work going in the factories. It's decent work, too."

"Yeah," Steve said, hooking his suspenders back up over his shoulders. Even with Bucky a thousand miles away across an ocean, he could hear his voice in his head, like always, spouting the exact same shit. It's decent work, Steve, it's important work, there's no shame in it, it's better than getting killed, don't you think? "Yeah, I know. I know."

He passed by some kind of commotion on the way out, with another rejection crumpled up in his fist. Men in white coats clutching clipboards flooded the corridor; he was jostled to the side, pressed himself to the wall for a moment to let them by.

Someone had been shot, he gathered, from the voices that rattled past, some doctor of some kind. Something had been stolen. A cold shiver crept over his skin, and he wrapped his jacket at little tighter around himself. Someone walking over his grave.

-

“That was some exceptional marksmanship you displayed today, Sergeant.”

He’d been called into a meeting late that evening, when the camp had finally been cleared, when the dead had been dealt with and wounded tended, and the rest of them had picked themselves up and moved on to pitch their tents somewhere fresh. A meeting with a colonel Bucky hadn’t seen since he finished training, he didn’t think, who he vaguely remembered screaming in his face as he stood deathly still in a long line.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, with a dip of his head, trying not to picture the skulls he’d split open without so much as blinking.

They were forming a team, the colonel explained to him, a special kind of squad – Bucky got the sense he was trying to make it sound exciting, like some type of action hero thing. The colonel talked about special missions and exceptional soldiers, and maybe Bucky was a little flattered, that he’d been picked out for something like that. More than that, though, he was nervous. That was the feeling curling in the pit of his stomach, drawing his muscles tense with a sort of fear he didn’t quite understand.

The colonel made it clear, with a wry smile Bucky was sure was meant to be charming, that this was no ‘cushy job’ – no easy break. In fact, he made sure to mention, it was going to be a lot harder than what Bucky had been doing so far – though he’d get to avoid a lot of the ‘grunt work’. That had him struggling not to frown – what the hell did this guy think he had been doing, ‘so far’?

He took the offer anyway, shook hands and smiled, knowing that it wasn’t an offer, really, so much as it was a command.

-

“I hear you’re leaving us, Barnes.”

That one staff sergeant – that one who liked to air his grievances at the expense of his men’s dignity. That one who’d bruised Bucky’s cheek for talking back that time. All the soldiers they’d lost in the onslaught – and that fucker got to survive. The thought entered Bucky’s head with a surge of venom that gave way to guilt almost instantly. Who was he to decide who deserved to live? Still, he bristled at the sight of him. His jutting jaw and curled lip. The side of his cold face was splattered with blood. Whose, Bucky wondered, with a kind of detached ache.

“That’s right, sir.” He lifted his head to speak, out of politeness, and went back to packing his things. He wouldn’t be answerable to this man much longer. A Jeep was coming to take him and Gabe away from camp in an hour.

“’cause you think you’re better than the rest of us, hm? Think you’re special?”

Bucky bit the inside of his cheek and kept quiet. Shoved his little pocket Bible deep down into his duffel bag – his picture of Steve was in there, folded between the pages of Revelations. Had to keep that safe. 

Staff Sergeant Asshole put his hand on him then and shoved his shoulder to make him turn. Not content with his lack of an answer. And Bucky didn’t know what made him do it, but – residual adrenaline, maybe, from earlier, or the knowledge that this man wasn’t _really_ his superior anymore, or just plain exhaustion making it feel like nothing mattered, but – he talked back.

“No, sir, I don’t think I’m better than anyone, sir, but it seems like someone higher up sure does.”

It was a stupid thing to say but he said it, so he wasn’t surprised, exactly, when in the next second the staff sergeant had his hand around his throat and his back against one of the thick tent posts. It made the canvas quiver. It made pain that he barely felt blossom down the length of Bucky’s spine.

“Piece of _shit_ little upstart mother _fucker—”_

Bucky was staring into the eyes of someone who hated him, blindly and mindlessly. If they were on opposite sides, he thought, this man wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. He’d probably take pleasure in it. Hell, maybe he still would, if he thought he could get away with it. These days Bucky thought often about how he was going to die. ‘Murdered by one of his own’ was the newest on the list, but probably not the least likely.

The man’s thumb was digging in to some place that made him feel a little nauseous, then again maybe it was just fear. What would he do if Bucky threw up on him right then, he wondered, would he let go? Squeeze harder?

“You’re no fuckin’ better than I am, Barnes, you little asshole. I know _exactly_ what you are, you little—”

What was he accused of being? A coward? A queer? Bucky wasn’t sure which would be worse. It was getting steadily more difficult to breathe. He wasn’t actually going to kill him, was he? Not here, surely? Not here? Something was clinking quietly, his hand was going to his waist – dear God, he wasn’t going for his knife? As his head grew lighter and his chest grew tighter, Bucky dared a glance down.

He was unbuckling his belt.

-

It felt like years since he’d seen the inside of a bar. Weeks in reality, but the way they dragged, stretched out into something longer, longer, longer.

Sheltering in the warm cave of white noise and the dim light, Bucky let his head drop back, felt the ache run the whole length of his spine. Around him, the others at the table were talking names; something to call this new squad, this band of brothers they were being formed into whether they liked it or not.

Bucky wasn’t so sure he liked it at all. Wasn’t even sure he ought to be there, wasn’t sure he belonged there at all, among these men of exceptional mettle, of outstanding skill. Just because he was a decent shot, because he’d got lucky a couple times? He looked at their rough worn faces flickering in the orange light, closed his eyes and listened to the rumble of their voices, and felt apart from them, felt like something else. Felt the bruise still in his cheek where he’d been pressed up against that tent post, wood splintering under his skin. Don’t think about it, he thought firmly, and reached for his drink.

It didn’t take long for his glass to run dry, and it didn’t take long for him to run out of energy for sitting at that table, listening to all that talk, trying to come up with things to say when people spoke to him, which now and then they did. He got up with his empty glass in his hand as an excuse, but he left it on the edge of the bar as he went past, heading for the door.

The air was cool outside – not cold though, not like it got in New York. Still, it would do. It was quieter, which was all he wanted, really – just a handful of couples standing close and whispering sweet nothings to one another in dim corners. Bucky put his head back against the brick and patted himself down, looking for cigarettes he knew he didn’t have. Didn’t matter. Fresh air might actually do him good, he supposed.

Minutes later the door swung open – the noise from inside for a moment reached full volume before it faded again – Bucky’s eyes opened a little wider than he would’ve cared to admit. It was only Gabe, though, glancing around as though looking for someone – and when his gaze landed on Bucky he headed towards him. The door opened a second time, and Dernier’s face appeared in the gap. “Gabriel! Attends – t’as une clope?” 

They swapped quick words in French, Dernier’s quick and incomprehesible, Gabe’s careful and heavily accented, and ending in Gabe producing a packet of Lucky Strikes with a roll of his eyes and handing one over before Dernier ducked back inside with a grin under his moustache.

“I studied French at Howard,” Gabe said told Bucky, by way of explanation, as he settled himself against the wall beside him. “German at first, but I only stuck it for a few semesters before I switched to French.”

Bucky sipped his drink. “What made you change your mind?”

The corner of Gabe’s mouth twitched. “Cuter girls.” His gaze flicked from Bucky’s face to somewhere a little lower – to his loosened tie and undone top buttons. He made a slight gesture with his head, swaying to the side a little, just a _little,_ in Bucky’s direction, and his eyebrows moved up a fraction. Very softly then, with a very soft smile, he said: “Cuter guys, too.”

That made Bucky’s mouth go dry real quick. He hesitated a second too long, long enough to see Gabe’s expression begin to change and worry begin to creep in around the edges – he could imagine what that must feel like so he made himself speak. Made his tone light as he could, made it into a joke. “What, like Jacques over there?”

Gabe flushed a little but it was with relief; he was laughing, despite himself. “Nah, I didn’t mean—”

“That’s your type?” Bucky nudged him in the ribs, not hard at all. “Dernier?”

“Shut the hell up, Barnes,” Gabe told him – and then they looked at each other, and the pair of them dissolved into laughter. Stomach-hurting, rib-aching laughter, clutching each other’s shoulders to keep from falling over laughter, tears in their eyes laughter, is it even funny anymore or is this just a way to let out a fraction the tension laughter. By the time they pulled themselves together Bucky’s lungs were sore, his throat felt rough. He smiled at Gabe, who was wiping the corners of his eyes, catching his breath.

“You want another drink?” Bucky’s face felt warm, and though the weight in his chest was still there, still resting safe in the space where his heart was supposed to be – it felt a little lighter, just for a few moments, then.

Gabe was smiling right back at him. “Yeah. Sure as hell do.”

-

Without Bucky in it Steve’s apartment felt too big, all two rooms of it. Too quiet even with the clamour from the neighbours on all sides, through the walls so thin even whispers got through them if you weren't careful. Steve turned the wireless on to static, loud as he could make it go, and lay down on Bucky's side of the bed. Put his nose into the part of the pillowcase he'd ruined with his pomade that never washed out properly, always held on to the smell. He'd nagged him so much about that. Never would've imagined being grateful for it. 

Hours of lying awake in the dark later he realised he was still waiting for the scrape of Bucky's key in the lock. It never came.

Sleep, when it finally arrived, was restless and troubled; it felt as though morning took far too long to come, as though the Sun were dragging her heels; and when at long last it did, it didn’t feel as though there was much point in getting up anyway. He had no job to go to that day and no Bucky to make coffee for – what was the point?

 _C’mon, lazybones, can’t lie there all day._ Bucky would smile it at him while he himself still languished catlike on the mattress, soft with sleep and all spread out, looking at Steve with grinning eyes like he was just waiting for an excuse to stay. His hand on Steve’s waist, neither low nor high enough to be indecent but suggestion in the press of his fingers nonetheless; _time to get up, baby._

Steve dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Reminded himself as firmly as he could that if he didn’t haul himself up and find actual, paid work in the next few days Mr Murphy wouldn’t hesitate to kick him out the minute he fell a single cent behind on the rent – imagine the look on Bucky’s face if he came home and Steve had to tell him he’d gone and lost the damn apartment.

That was how it was, since Bucky went away. That was the new routine. 

He got up. He got dressed. He went downstairs and bought a paper from the vendor on the corner, raised an eyebrow at the front page for a minute.

_MILITARY SCIENTIST SHOT DEAD DURING TOP SECRET TESTS_

There was that shiver – Steve put a hand to the back of his neck as all the hairs stood on end. Must’ve been what happened when he was there last – he was curious, yet at the same time something deterred him from actually reading the piece. He flipped past it instead, going searching for news from the front. The part that was actually important.

The rest of his day would be bearable just as long as there was nothing about the 107th.

Rebecca walked past that corner on her way to work each day, and it chanced that Steve was still sitting on a bench staring with glum resignation at the classifieds when she did so that morning.

“Nothin’ calling out to you?” she asked him, with a kind hand on his shoulder.

“All just seems so pointless,” he admitted, and felt weak when he tried to smile.

“Tell you what,” Becca said after a moment, chuffing a little warmth into his arm with her gentle gloved hand. “I got this new friend, guy who works in the office next to mine – we get lunch from the same place, real decent fella – he served for a few years, I think, got sent home just recently. All honours, of course.” She smiled, kind of conspiratorially, like she was trying to bring Steve in on something. He appreciated her effort. “Anyway, he works for this, it’s a sort of advertisment company, I think they call it. They make recruitment posters, things like that.”

She was looking at him like she was searching for something in his face, some spark of interest, anything. Steve tried his best to give it to her.

“How about I ask him?” She gave his arm a little squeeze. “You’ve still got that book of your drawings, right, from college? I could take it along, show it to them – I’m sure they’d want to have you, Steve.”

He could have argued – there was any number of things he might have said, if he felt like being stubborn, putting her off. But she was looking at him so earnest, and he could see her brother in her eyes so clearly then. “Alright,” he said, smiling the best he could manage. “Thanks, Becca.”

She looked pleased. She looked… it seemed like relieved. Clapped him on the shoulder lightly. “I’ll come by after work and pick it up, then. I’ll bring some dinner.”

“Aw, no, you don’t have to—”

She was already walking away, wasn’t letting him argue. God, they were so like each other. A little wave of her hand, a red-lipsticked grin. “See you at dinner, Steve.”

-

Rebecca’s friend was a tall, well-built, good-looking fella, smartly dressed, with a gap between his front teeth that showed when he smiled – which was often – and hands that dwarfed Steve’s when they shook them – no surprises there – who introduced himself very amiably as Sam Wilson. They met for lunch at his and Becca’s regular haunt, and Sam told him that they were, indeed, looking for an illustrator, and that he was sure he could wrangle Steve an interview with his boss, especially with that portfolio.

Steve was grateful, he was flattered, and he said so, but there was one thing – the reason he hadn’t actually worked professionally as an artist before – “I’m colourblind,” he said, lightly, braced for Sam’s face to close, for the offer to be withdrawn.

But Sam just shrugged, spread his hands, still smiling. “We’ve got plenty of folk doing colours. If you wanna just do linework, I’m sure that’d be fine.”

So when they got up to go, Steve shook his hand again, and said, “Alright.”

-

When Gabe showed up in Bucky’s room late that night, with his eyes dark and asking, Bucky didn’t say no. His hands were big and rough and nothing like Steve’s, and he didn’t kiss him goodnight like Steve did, didn’t snore like Steve did, but Bucky slept a little better that night anyway, just for having someone else breathing softly by his side.

In the morning the newly-christened Howling Commandos received their first mission. Intel had been received about an enemy weapons shipment that would be travelling through the Swiss Alps some time in the next few days, and their task was to intercept it and recover what was on board. A new kind of weapon, was what they said was on board. Something dangerous, they said, so prepare for it. Something dangerous, but they didn’t know much more.

They were issued new uniforms, told to keep them nice and neat. Bucky’s jacket was blue; he stood in front of a cracked mirror straightening the hem and wondered what Steve would make of him. Touched the place Steve’s teeth had marked that last night and willed himself to still feel it, pressed hard with his thumb as though the bruise was still there somewhere, deep down. It hurt a little, in the muscle, and that had to do.

They even had their picture taken, one standing in a straight line, stern-faced; one “at ease”, arms around each other, and Bucky made himself smile for it like he didn’t feel sick, sick, sick.

They were issued packets of cigarettes and an extra rum ration. Bribes, Bucky thought distantly, as his lighter clicked.

“Get some rest, now, fellas,” their colonel told them, pacing up and down before their nice, straight line. “You’ll be heading out tomorrow.”


	4. letters, vol. II

_Steve_

_Things aren't going so great right now can't say much but_

_glad you're not here anyway even though I ~~miss you yeah I know I said it I miss you~~_

_tell me what you're doing what's going on back there hope you're keeping ~~busy~~ keeping out of trouble remember I'm not there to bail you out anymore so you sure as hell better not_

_Sorry doll it's a little hard to concentrate. Dark too can't see so great. Just felt like I had to write since_

_I'm thinking_

_of you_

_send chocolate_

_your Bucky_

-

_Bucky,_

_Sorry to hear you're not doing so good. If I didn't know you better I'd be worried, but I do, so I'm not. I wish I was there. Think you need someone watching out for you. Besides, it's dull at home. Never thought I'd be saying that about Brooklyn. Not much to do, though. Got a job in an office. It's boring as sin, but I'm pulling in a little more cash, so I'll buy you a drink when you get back._

_Your handwriting is getting worse._

_Ally misses you. So does Louise, though she doesn't talk so much. Reckon it's a teenager thing, she'll grow out of it._

_Not sure what else to say. I feel like everything about the girls, Becca will already have told you, and I don't want you to have to read the same thing twice. She misses you badly, though, in case she hasn't told you that herself. Maybe I miss you a little bit too. A guy can have too much peace and quiet._

_Tell me you're alright._

_Yours,_

_Steve_

_-_

_Steve,_

_I'm alright. I miss you_

_Tired and I miss you._

_tell everyone I love them_

_Your Bucky_

_-_

_Bucky,_

_Everyone loves you too. You're a popular guy. I'm going to put the brevity of your last letter down to your being terribly busy with more important things. I'm going to believe you that you're alright._

_It's been raining here for almost a week. Is it raining where you are? Would they let you tell me that, at least?_

_Louise lights a candle for you every Sunday. I guess it's good to be reminded that God's watching over you, even if I can't be. They still won't let me sign up. It's bullshit._

_I know you'll have plenty of good reasons for not writing in a while. I know you will when you can. I hope it's soon._

_Yours,_

_Steve_

-

_Let's go away when I get back,_ Bucky's last letter read, in a hand that trembled and scrawled across the page, _somewhere safe just you and me Stevie let's go away. I'll have a bit of money then from this gig that's the upside of this whole thing I guess isn't it that they're paying me to be here they're paying me to do this so I'll have a bit of money I'll sock it all away and we can go Steve let's go somewhere sweetheart let's go away somewhere safe._

_-_

_Bucky,_

_We can go wherever you want. Name the place. I'll be waiting._

_Yours,_

_Steve_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter comes.

Rebecca was on his doorstep when he got home despite the cold, despite the hour, and Steve knew as soon as he looked at her. It was written clearer on her face than it was in the letter and he felt, as soon as he looked at her, part of himself die too.

"I'm sorry," she said, when he'd got the door unlocked and sat them both down on the sofa, shaking, and she was able to open her mouth. "I'm so sorry, Steve."

He couldn't help thinking, what the hell are you saying sorry to me for? You didn't kill him. He's _your_ brother.

"Does it say how?" he asked, somehow, hearing the words in his voice from outside himself, feeling like someone else was saying them.

Rebecca sounded far-off and faint. "He fell."

When they rode the coasters at Coney Island Bucky would grip the safety rail so tight it would take him almost a minute to pry his fingers off after. He would turn so pale, laugh it off after but he'd be _so_ pale, with a sheen on his brow and his eyes a little too wide. It scared him, Steve knew. He wouldn't say, but Steve knew. Even the Ferris wheel scared him. When they reached the top he'd grip Steve's hand, pressed between their legs, if he thought no one could see, and hold his breath.

"He's afraid of heights," Steve said. His heart had left his body. He could feel the raw and open place between his ribs where it had been torn out, leaving him lightheaded and numb.

Rebecca covered her face with her hand and wept.

-

Steve cried like forcing everything inside of him out. Until he forgot how to do anything else. Only stopped when his body wouldn’t let him keep going any longer.

Rebecca held his hand. He hated himself for putting her through this. Making her comfort him when the grief had to be just as heavy on her. Since the letter her eyes were always red, her face always pallid. And God, she had the little ones, too, and her ma to look after. Steve knew it would be her doing the looking after. Always had been always was. He felt the guilt, deep and heavy, beneath the grief, but he still couldn’t do shit about it.

He could barely do anything. He could barely breathe.

-

There was no body to bury so they called it a memorial instead of a funeral. There was no casket to watch over, nothing to lower gently into the ground and cover with roses and earth. No ashes or dust. Mrs Barnes paid for a cross anyway, so there’d be something at least, somewhere to go and think of him even if he wasn’t there. And they stood dressed in black in a quiet corner of the same cemetery that held the bodies of Steve’s mother and father, that one day would probably hold him too, but wouldn’t ever hold Bucky.

Bucky was miles and miles and miles away and all by himself. The thought was so dark and thick it felt like he was suffocating under it. It crept in and inhabited every empty space the loss of him had left in Steve’s body, settled like a heavy fog in his throat and in his lungs, behind his ribs. There was nothing else there now. That was where Bucky had always lived.

The wake was miserable. Watching Mrs Barnes and her daughters do their best to talk to family and friends, accept their sympathies with grace and smiles and offer food and drink in return, to show their grief but only as much as was allowed – while Steve stood dumb with it, rendered helpless, immobile. Susie was there and Steve could see how badly Rebecca wanted to lean into her but had to hold back, could see the way they looked at each other and for a moment he hated them for it, for still having what he never ever would again. The hatred flickered white and hot within him but only for a moment, extinguished by the very next beat of his heart.

He stayed on after to help clean up, insisted on it with words he had to force out from between his teeth like he was speaking through a mouthful of black treacle. Gathered plates into a pile beside the sink, ran the water until it was steaming hot and didn’t feel it when he plunged his hands under. Didn’t feel it when the knife he was scrubbing slipped the tip of his finger, didn’t feel it when blood gathered and dripped, didn’t feel it, didn’t feel it, didn’t feel it. Without Bucky, Steve would never feel anything every again. Without Bucky there was nothing left worth feeling.

_We looked for you after._

Staring at his own front door not quite able to remember how he got there – Rebecca kissing his cheek goodbye, Mrs Barnes tearfully squeezing his hand, wondering when their eyes met how much she really knew. Nothing after that, must’ve made the walk on autopilot. Steve lit a cigarette. He couldn’t quite bring himself to open the door just yet.

_My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery._

It wasn’t as though it was going to be any different inside. The apartment had been empty when he left, it had been empty for weeks, for months now, since Bucky last set foot inside it.

A breath of wind rustled through his hair, through the collar of his shirt, and Steve closed his eyes against the ghost of Bucky’s hand on his shoulder. He didn’t want to open the door. It was going to be different. It was going to look exactly as it had when he left but it was going to be different, and it was never going to be the same again.

-

"Sir, please. I'm asking you to give me a chance."

His hands in fists on his thighs, nails making dents in his palms. So tense with the effort of keeping from shivering in the chill, he was almost shaking with it anyway. The doctor looked at him over his clipboard, that eyebrows-raised condescension that still made his skin crawl no matter how many times he sat under it.

Bucky is dead. You don't understand, Bucky is dead. Bucky is dead and I'm just sitting here. I'm just sitting here drawing fucking pictures and Bucky is dead I'm sitting here drawing pictures while his body lies somewhere cold and alone where no one can reach him and he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead and I'm just sitting here and he's

"Son--"

"My best friend gave his life to this war," Steve spat, and the doctor didn't flinch. "And I--"

"And, what? You think you're going to avenge him?"

"I--"

"Don't be so naive, son." It wasn't scornful, his tone, or mocking; there was weariness in it. "Look at yourself. You wouldn't last five minutes in boot camp, let alone on the front."

He'd heard it before and knew it was true but that didn't take the sting out of it. Didn't make him care, either, this time any more than it had every other. Under his breath, muttering: “Don’t call me son.”

"There are other ways to help the war effort." Collecting scrap in his little red wagon. The doctor was ushering Steve towards the door. "Throwing your life away won't bring your friend back. It'd only mean the people who care about you would have to feel what you're feeling right now. You want that for them?"

For a moment the nausea that rolled constantly in Steve's gut threatened to rise up above the numbness that kept it at bay. Perhaps that was what made him say it. The momentary lapse in judgement as darkness crept into the edges of his vision. "There is no one else, sir. He was all I had."

There was pity in the doctor’s eyes that Steve couldn’t bear to have turned on him, so he left. Buttoned his shirt back up with numb fingers, _did not stumble_ as he slid off the bench, said nothing, not even a thank you. What was there to be thankful for, anyway?

The doctor closed the door behind him.

-

“Dr Zola’s on the train. HYDRA dispatcher gave him permission to open up the throttle. Wherever he’s going, they must need him bad.”

What they were doing seemed fucking ridiculous, something lifted straight from the pages of a comic book. Such was war, Bucky supposed, in a vain effort to detach himself from how insane and downright terrifying the plan was. Jesus Christ, if Steve could see him now. If Steve could see him about to zipwire onto a moving fucking train.

Over a fucking crevasse like this, too. Bucky had never seen anything like it in his life. Hell, though, he’d always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Maybe he could call this the next best thing.

“…they’re moving like the devil. We’ll only have about ten seconds to make the landing.”

Bucky tuned back in to Falsworth’s elegant accent, looked up from the drop below and suppressed a jolt as Dugan smacked his arm in a manner that was chummy but still a touch harder than it needed to be. Especially standing on an edge like this. With ice underfoot.

He didn’t think too much of Dugan; sure he pulled his weight all right and he could kill a man probably better than anyone else among them, but Bucky didn’t like the way he talked about his wife, like she was something to be kept and tolerated rather than loved.

“Take it from me, kid,” he’d told Bucky once as he crumpled up a letter from her in one big mean hand, smiling with just his teeth, “Don’t ever get married.”

And Bucky had bit his tongue on saying, “You’ve no fuckin idea how much I wish I could,” and he’d fallen asleep that night dreaming about a circle of gold on Steve’s left hand.

Dugan didn’t hesitate as he stepped off the edge, though. Had to give it to him for that. Bucky did, as he tightened his grip on the piece of metal and wire that was the only thing keeping him from plummeting to an icy death hundreds of feet below. Only for a moment, but he did, and his stomach turned. And then he was flying.

-

This soldier had weapons like something out of one those science fiction novels Steve liked to tease him for still being so fond of, those books he’d been reading since he was a boy, never grew out of them. Guns like great cannons, one mounted under each arm, batteries strapped all across him – could hardly see where the man stopped and the weapon began. The soldier wore a helmet like an iron welder, so it wasn’t even clear if he was a man at all under there or if that was all there was to him – gunpowder and steel instead of flesh and blood. Those cannons squealed as they powered up, with a sound that set Bucky’s teeth on edge, made the inside of his skull ache – they fired great shocks of blue lightning, brighter than tracer rounds, bright enough to stain the backs of Bucky’s eyeballs, leave blindspots bursting there no matter how hard he blinked.

Now this soldier, this thing, was between him and his men. His gun was almost empty. He’d been counting.

Bucky squeezed the trigger once. The bullet ricocheted off the back of that fucking helmet. What the fuck even was that? Solid fucking steel?

It got his attention, though. The soldier turned. Bucky was breathing harder than he ever had but the strange thing was the air didn’t seem to be going all the way in, just catching in his chest, making his head spin, the soldier turned towards him and there was that scream as the barrels of those huge fucking guns like cannons powered up and then –

Heat ripped through the carriage and then the sharpest gust of ice wind, enough to knock him flat – he’d been ducking out of the way already and this threw him onto his back, forced what little breath was left right out of him, as a vast chunk of the metal wall was blown out and into the valley below – for just a moment he thought oh God, was that it, am I dead, but then he heard his name –

_Bucky!_

The solider was advancing on him, that sound, that fucking sound, that _light,_ and behind it there was Falsworth, and Dugan, and Gabe –

A bullet bounced off its armoured back – like a great animal angered the soldier hefted itself around, turned those guns on his men, and again those lights began to blaze, and everything became very quiet and very slow as, amongst all the fear and the chaos, one single thought became absolutely clear.

That thought was: It’s me or the mission.

That thought was: It’s me or all of us.

That thought was: It’s the right thing to do.

He was on his feet, and taking hold of the soldier by the thick cables protruding from those guns. He held on tighter than he’d ever held to anything, and hauled, with all his might, towards the gaping, gasping hole in the side of the train.

With such a massive weapon mounted on him, it didn’t take much for the soldier to stumble. One foot wrong and then another –

Bucky felt the ground disappear from beneath him. He felt the cold wind swallow him up like water.

 _Sweetheart,_ he thought, _I’m sorry._

He’d been afraid that dying would hurt, but falling didn’t hurt at all.

-

Steve kept going to his job, though it didn’t feel like him who was going. Someone else piloting his body for him, making him get up get dressed get outside and then, eventually, get home again. His work was lacklustre, uninspired; he drew like a machine. Stiff lines, dull faces. He knew the drop in quality hadn’t gone unnoticed, but it didn’t seem to matter. How was he supposed to care? How was he supposed to care about anything at all?

When he wasn’t at work he did nothing. He ate when his vision started to blur from the lack of it and no more; he drank a couple of beers a night to put himself to sleep faster; he lay in the dark with the wireless on to block out the silence. He spent whole weekends in bed, staring at the peeling paint, the fluttering curtains, the backs of his eyelids. Every now and then Becca would come by, an evening or two a week, and they would sit together and try to eat, try to pretend for each other’s sake that they were doing better than they were. Try not to talk about him, but what else was there. What else was there.

He knew he was getting sick because he always did in the winter, because it was getting harder to breathe, because he had to stop more than twice on the walk to work, exhausted. When he coughed it left blood on his lips.

“Go home, Rogers,” his manager told him, firm but perhaps a little frightened underneath, after he’d spent ten painful minutes hunched over his desk wheezing like some kind of dying creature.

“I’m fine,” he rasped, though the room was spinning. “I can—”

“Go. Home.” His manager’s face was hard and set. “You can come back when you’re better.” 

So he got up and he went.

He didn’t get better, though. He had no reason to want to. For a week he lay in bed just wasting, just waiting. As he drifted off at night he’d think, maybe this time. Maybe now I’ll get to see you again.

-

The following Monday he was startled out of a murky slumber by someone thumping on the front door. Idly he wondered who the hell was out there, making a ruckus like that – Mr Murphy, maybe, but he had a key if it was a real emergency – but not enough to get up and find out. Not until the someone started yelling.

“Rogers, you open this damn door or I’m gonna kick it down.”

Steve opened his eyes again, frowning. That was Sam Wilson’s voice.

“I know you’re in there, Rogers – don’t make me get Rebecca.” 

Christ, Steve thought, alright. Getting up was more difficult than he’d predicted, took a couple of tries, the walls kept moving and he kept having to – grab onto things to keep himself off the floor – he’d be damned if he was going to crawl to the fucking door.

“Jesus,” Sam said, when Steve at long last got the door open and Sam got to look at him. The effort of getting across the apartment made his face a little out of focus but Steve could still make out his expression; he looked kind of disturbed. “You’re _really_ sick.”

“Gee,” Steve tried to say, but all that came out was a horrible little croak. When was the last time he’d spoken? A week ago? “Thanks. Come—”

Sam was already letting himself in though, manoeuvring carefully past Steve, who was leaning heavily on the doorframe. “…in.”

Looking at it as Sam was now, Steve could see for the first time in a long time the mess his apartment had become. Looking at Sam as he looked at the empty bottles on the table, the shirts left lying on the floor, the plates in the sink, the pile of envelopes next to the door that just got shoved to the side when Steve opened it – he felt a twinge of embarrassment. In a way, though, it was nice. Feeling something, instead of just being numb.

From the shitheap of a living room, Sam had turned his attention to Steve himself. Just looked at him a moment before taking a step closer and – setting his hands on Steve’s shoulders. His hands were warm through Steve’s thin shirt and the contact – it made him shudder, despite himself. How long since he’d last touched another person, for longer than a moment? His heart gave a sick kind of flutter. Sam was looking him in the face with his eyebrows raised.

“When did you last eat, Rogers?”

“I…” Steve floundered. Realised he couldn’t remember. It was so hard to separate the emptiness gnawing at his stomach from the emptiness that had devoured the rest of him. It was so hard to care.

“No offence,” Sam said, “but you look like shit. And you—well, you kind of smell like you’ve died, man.”

I feel like I’ve died, Steve thought, and shrugged.

“Look, you think you can get dressed?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, go on. We need to get you outside.”

-

When he had managed to wash and dress – it took long enough for Steve to be embarrassed about the fact that Sam was waiting for him the whole time – Sam dragged him out to a diner down the street, politely not mentioning it when Steve had to stop every few feet to steady himself against the wall. 

He ordered them burgers and fries and watched quietly, face pinched with concern, as Steve picked listlessly at the plate in front of him.

“You not a burgers kind of guy?”

Steve looked up, shrugged, made a little effort to eat a bite or two. For Sam’s sake. There was a war on, it was no good wasting food.

When he actually tasted the food he found he suddenly felt the hunger he’d been ignoring; it was painfully sharp; he ate the rest and felt sick and guilty afterwards.

Sam lit a cigarette for him on the walk back to his place. Walked him right back up to the doorstep and leant there, looking at him. Steve avoided his eyes; there was a depth in them that unsettled him, like he was seeing more than he said, like he knew too much.

“You know,” Sam said, as he stubbed out the smouldering end of his cigarette. “I lost someone, too.”

Steve’s teeth grit together, made his jaw ache. He opened his mouth and closed it again. What the hell had Becca been saying to this guy?

“Rebecca told you I served, right?”

Yeah, Steve thought, go on and rub it in that you and every other guy in the country either is doing or has already done what I can’t. “Yeah,” he said, staring at his shoes.

“I was a pilot, did she mention? Yeah, well, I was flying a mission one night with my wingman Riley. Standard stuff, basic, nothing we hadn’t done a thousand times before. ’cept there was an anti-aircraft gun nobody had spotted. Shot him right out of the sky, just like…” Sam went to snap his fingers – stopped just short. “There was nothing I could do. Like I was up there just to watch.” He scratched at his chin. “I could hear him, too, on the radio while he…”

Bitterly, Steve thought, at least you were there with him. At least you know where he lies.

“Look, Steve, can I come in?”

Feeling suddenly gutless and weak, he faltered. “It’s—it’s getting late, Sam.”

“It’s not always a good thing, being alone at a time like this.”

“I—” Steve shook his head. “I’m alright. I can get by on my own.”

Silence stretched between them for a long moment. Steve couldn’t look up. He hadn’t felt a thing in weeks and now this guilt, it was crushing his ribs.

“Alright. You rest up, then.” 

Steve looked up to watch him leave. He didn’t turn back once. With the door closed Steve put his fingers to the wood of the frame and tried to remember the exact place Bucky had rested his head the last time Steve pressed him up against it. Was it this chip in the paint? Maybe that one?

-

The advertising company let him go; the letter came half-way into his third week of no-showing. Couldn’t blame them, and it didn’t come as a surprise, either. Steve had stopped being able to count the number of jobs his health had cost him on his hands a long time ago.

It brought Sam back to his doorstep, though. That was a surprise – in a way Steve was surprised he was even able to feel surprise – in a way he was afraid that the cold cocoon of numbness he’d been nestled in might be thawing just a little. What would he do if it melted away completely? How could he possibly go back to feeling – how would he survive it?

Then again, he thought, maybe it would be better if he didn’t.

“Gonna let me in this time?” Sam’s face was serious.

“Sorry,” Steve said, and stood aside.

Sam went right in and sat at the kitchen table. “You don’t look any better than when I last saw you, Rogers.”

The clock on the wall ticked quietly. It was running slow, needed winding. Bucky used to do it; Steve couldn’t reach without standing on a chair.

“Listen. I know what you’re gonna think but I want you to hear me out. I got an empty room at my place.”

“Sam…” 

Sam set his hand on the table. “I said listen. Please.”

Steve shut his mouth. He hadn’t even sat down; he was just standing there by the door, useless and aching.

“I don’t know how you think you’re gonna pay your rent on this place in the state you’re in. And don’t you tell me you’re gonna get another job, no one in their right mind would hire a man looking like he’s got one foot through death’s door already.”

“So how am I gonna pay rent to you if I can’t pay it here, Sam?” Steve lifted his head then; his face felt hot, his jaw tight. “Like hell I’m gonna stay under your roof for free.”

Sam was calm and grave. “I own my place,” he said. “It belonged to my dad, he passed it down to me. I pay bills and that’s it, no rent, and when you’re well and earning again you can chip in.” He looked up and met Steve’s gaze, and held it steadily. “That’s all it would be. Getting you well again. Back on your feet.”

Humiliation had Steve’s cheeks burning with the most unpleasant kind of heat. It burned and burned, until it melted just enough of the ice inside of him to extinguish its own flame, and then he felt weak. He put out a hand to lean against the table, with the other covered his face.

The clock ticked and fell silent. The room rang with stillness.

A moment later Sam’s hand was on his. Quietly, he told him: “I know what you’re going through. I know how it feels.”

Without thinking, Steve answered: “It feels like I died when he did. Like my life ended with his.”

Sam’s hand was warm and careful; it rested there without weight or pressure. “I know,” he said. “But it didn’t.”

“Why not?” Steve’s voice broke. His hand fell away and left his tears unhidden, and he was too full of grief and hurting to have any room to feel ashamed. “I wish it had. I wish it had.”

“I know,” Sam told him, and it was clear in his eyes that he did. “I know.”

-

When he went to tell Rebecca he was leaving his apartment, her eyes filled with tears faster than he’d ever seen before; it scared him. She’d never been one to cry easily.

“I wish we could have you here,” she told him, pressing his hands between hers. “I’m so sorry, Steve.”

Her apologising took him aback. “It’s alright.” For her sake he tried to smile but his face couldn’t seem to remember how – it just felt strange. “Might even be good for me. You know, I’ve lived in the same place since I was six.” Since his parents bundled him onto the ship out of An Cóbh, that journey across the sea that he’d been too small to remember but knew from his ma’s stories had almost killed him. He’d gone from a cold, leaky cottage in Corcaigh to a cold, leaky apartment in Brooklyn and stayed there ever since. “Maybe it’s time I had a change.”

It was supposed to make her feel better, but her eyes still shone. Small and damp as it was that place had been his home, and she knew it as well as he did. It had been her brother’s home too, sometimes it had even been hers.

“I’ll come by for a visit,” she said, squeezing his hands tighter. “When you’re settled.”

Alice sloped past them on the way out of her room and said, “hiya, Steve,” without smiling. He slipped her a nickel from his pocket; Becca pretended not to notice. Bucky used to scold him for spoiling her, smiling the whole time.

-

He got better slowly – his body, at least. Wasting away in bed all day on his own was one thing, but with Sam there – patient as he was – it was different. Embarrassment, at least, and what little he had left of pride, worked as some kind of motivation to recover. If only so he could pull his weight. If only so he would be a little less of a burden.

In the weeks before he was well enough to work again, Steve went back to drawing. Mumbled something to Sam about keeping his skills sharp in case the company wanted to rehire him. He drew kind of mindlessly; put his pencil to the paper and drew what came to him. Sometimes it would just be sketches of his surroundings, things in the house, a study or two of Sam smoking in the kitchen in the evenings.

More often than not, though, Steve drew soldiers. Steve drew scenes from a war he’d never seen; soldiers in long lines against burning skies; haunted men with empty eyes. He drew soldiers, but he drew the same face time after time. The same wide eyes and thick lashes; the same mouth a little open; the same hands, often reaching, trying hard to hold on.

“You know,” Sam told him one day, stood flipping through a finished sketchbook left on the kitchen table. “I reckon I could sell these for you, if you were interested.”

Steve shrugged. “Take them, if you want.”

“You sure?”

“Mm. Think you could get enough to cover my bills?”

Apparently he did, because once or twice a month Sam would take a folder of Steve’s pictures away with him and come home with an envelope, and always promise he’d taken what Steve owed him out of it already.

“For groceries, too?”

“Groceries too.”

Steve never opened the envelopes. He tried to make Sam keep them, and when he refused, he shoved them under his mattress like he and Bucky always used to do and left them there.

-

One last try, he told himself. Just one.

Put his real name on the forms, his real address. Put that he’d been born in Brooklyn, though, because he only knew the the Irish word for Corcaigh.

The doctor took one look at him and Steve already knew the answer.

“Please,” Steve said, before the man had even opened his mouth. He thought perhaps he recognised him. Perhaps he’d seen him already once before.

“War’s almost over, son,” said the doctor, with a deep and weary sigh.

“Almost,” Steve said. “So there’s still time.”

The doctor shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m afraid not. Not for you.”

-

Two men lay dying in the snow. Two men stood over them.

“Atmet er noch?”

A nudge to his side. Pain blossoming. He couldn’t breathe.

“Dieser?”

He couldn’t see. Just white, everything, all just white. A shadow moved over him.

“Ja.”

“Jawohl, er atmet.”

“Und dieser?”

The shadow drifted.

“Nein. Kaum.”

“Die Waffe, kann es gerettet werden?”

Was this dying? He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He was so cold.

“Ja, ich glaube.”

So cold. So cold, so cold, so cold.

“Sehr gut. Nimm es, erschieß ihn.”

The shadow drifted. A sound echoed. Something touched his face; wet, and for one moment warm.

Another nudge. More pain. His lungs tried to breathe, couldn’t.

“Er blutet viel, dieser hier.”

Shadows moving. Closer, closer, something touched him. He was broken. He had to be. Shattered to pieces.

“Dann beeilung. Zola will ihn am Leben.”

He felt himself lifted. Was this it? Was this death?

It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

-

He woke in darkness to a great pain in his side and a great weight on his chest. Moving, when he mustered the strength to try, was impossible. Something, it seemed, was keeping him down, keeping him still. He tried to reach, find what was holding him – only one of his arms would move, and then only a little. The other was numb. So he had to be injured – Christ, what had happened, the last memory he had left in his head was the train –

Out of his sight, a door creaked open. A pale, sickly sliver of light fell across his face, still enough to make his eyes hurt.

Footsteps that echoed. His breathing was shallow, quick, pained –

Finally, a voice. One that was creeping and slow. Even the accent was threatening.

“Sergeant Barnes. How good to finally meet you up close.”

He tried to turn his head, strained hard to do it, still couldn’t.

“We’re going to have a very—exciting time together, you and I.”

A light clicked on. It was blinding.

-

The fall hadn’t killed him.

He began to wish it had.

-

Gathered round the wireless, Steve, Sam and Rebecca in Sam’s living room, with baited breath. The volume turned up. Truman speaking steady and clear.

“…the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.”


	6. letters, vol. III: unsent

_Steve,_

_If I don’t make it out this time, just know that I_

-

_Bucky,_

_I’m certain now that souls exist. And I’m certain that you were half of mine at least, because I’m so empty now my love. When you went you took that part away with you too, and I can’t blame you, I just wish you’d taken more. I wish you’d taken all of me with you, Bucky. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d held on tighter to you. I wish I’d been there to break your fall._

_Are you looking down on me, angel that you are now? Do you like it up there where you are?_

_Call down to me, can’t you? Let me know you’re safe and peaceful, and not stuck lost and wandering like I am without you. Call out so I know where to find you when it’s my turn._

_I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love_

-

_The world owes you such a debt, now, Buck. I’m sorry it won’t ever be paid._


	7. Chapter 7

“Is he here?”

“Whoa, slow down, what’s the matter, what’s—”

“Steve?”

The sound of her voice had him jolting up from the couch. Rebecca pushing past Sam and rushing towards him – hair loose around her shoulders, eyes wild, she was frantic, she was aflame.

“Becca? What is it? The girls—?”

She reached him and seized him, thrust a piece of crumpled paper into his chest. “He’s alive.”

Steve’s heart stopped.

“Steve— _Bucky is alive.”_

-

There was something wrong with his arm. It felt strange; too big and too heavy, too cold and ungainly. It didn’t move how he wanted it to. He went to lift a finger, and his hand made a fist.

-

The engine was still running in the car waiting outside, the same car they’d had for years, Mrs Barnes behind the wheel, white-faced, driving gloves hiding white knuckles where she clutched it, hard, like she wanted to hurt it.

“Ma isn’t happy that I made us stop for you,” Becca confessed, in a breathless rush as she and Steve hurried for the passenger seats. “But I had to, Steve, I had to, he’ll—he’ll want to see you, I—”

Steve only nodded. He couldn’t speak. His heart was racing, terrified. Something had to be wrong. They’d get there and it wouldn’t be him, it would’ve been a mistake, it would be some other man with dark hair and doe eyes, and he’d have to go through it all again.

Mrs Barnes set off driving at a speed Steve never would’ve guessed she, let alone the motor, was capable of. “Jesus, Ma,” muttered Becca, as she was thrown back against her seat. “We want to get to him in one piece.”

With nothing left to do now Steve looked down at the letter Becca had shoved at him, that was still in his fist, unglimpsed at. He spread it out in his lap – his hands were shaking too badly to hold it to his face – and tried to blink the words into focus.

_…writing to inform you… Sgt. James Barnes of the 107_ _th Infantry Regiment…_

_…rescued from a POW detention center…_

_…sustained considerably injury… extensive damage to the brain…_

_…transferred to a specialist treatment facility in New York City…_

Steve scrubbed at his eyes as the words blurred together on the page – his sleeve came away dampened. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible. It was too much to ask for; it was too much to believe.

In the front seats Rebecca and her mother were talking in quick hushed voices, accents growing thicker with the stress, just like Bucky’s used to.

“All I’m saying’s we need to be prepared for him to be a different to how he was—”

“He’s my brother. I know him.”

“I know, sweetheart, but the letter said damage to the brain—his memory—”

“That doesn’t change _anything.”_

“Rebecca, all I’m saying—”

She snapped back sharp; Steve could feel the heat of it. “You’re his _mother.”_

“I’m yours too. And Ally’s. And Lou’s.”

“That doesn’t—”

With pain in her voice that touched Steve like a blade: “He might need more than we can do for him.”

Rebecca sat back in her seat, arms folded; in the rear-view Steve could see her lip trembling, though her face was set, resolute.

Steve closed his eyes. What if she was right, what if that was true? He’d do anything for Bucky, give anything, he’d give him his life. But if his life wasn’t enough, what then? What more could he give? What else could he do?

-

There was something wrong with his head. He tried to say his name, and—

“…now, Soldat.”

He couldn’t remember.

There was something wrong with his head.

He tried to say his name.

There was something wrong with his head.

-

The drive seemed to take a long time. The car was quiet for the rest of it. Rebecca sat fidgeting, restless; every now and then she began to cry a little, then sternly stopped herself. Steve didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. He read and reread the letter a hundred times, his lips moving with it though they made no sound, until he could repeat it to himself without looking.

Anything, he told himself. He would be prepared for anything.

-

“Is there anyone alive in here?”

“Looks empty. Shit, hold on—oh, Jesus.”

Footsteps.

“Fuck. What is that?”

“Is there someone—Christ. Is he still breathing? Is he alive?”

“Is that—no way. Is that—Barnes? Sergeant Barnes?”

“What’s he… Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with him? What _is_ that?”

“Can you get him down from—off that thing?”

“Sergeant? Hey, Barnes? Can you hear me?”

Movement then. Movement meant pain. He fell forwards and it screamed through every part of him.

His hand made a fist.

“Please,” he whispered. “Help me.”

“Whoa, what—what’s wrong with his _arm?”_

“That’s not right—”

“Barnes, it’s alright, we’re here to help you— _no_ —”

“Jesus Christ, get it _off—_ get it off of him—”

“Please—I can’t—please—”

For a moment there was light.

“Help me—”

With it was a new pain. A bright, hot, tearing pain. 

He screamed, and screamed, until all was dark again, and again all that was left was pain.

-

The treatment facility was a large, imposing building; inside a man in uniform asked them questions before he would let them go anywhere. Who were they, why were they there; it took Mrs Barnes handing over the letter before he was close to satisfied. And then still, he turned his narrowed eyes on Steve.

“Are you family too?”

Before anyone else could answer, Becca did; her voice was hard. “Yes. He’s family.”

There was no room left for argument. The doorman still looked a little suspicious, but he didn’t press, and Steve loved Rebecca then like she was an angel.

They were shown into a waiting room where they sat for an insufferable number of minutes, then into another where, after more waiting, a man in a white coat came to speak with them. Shook their hands first, each in turn; Steve was feeling sicker by the second. He still couldn’t stop thinking, what if they were wrong? What if it wasn’t really Bucky? What then? What then?

“Mrs Barnes, Miss Barnes, and—?” The man in the white coat turned to him.

“My fiancé,” Becca said, without missing a beat. It took Steve longer to realise she was talking about him – alright, he thought, whatever works. The man in the white coat didn’t look like he gave much of a shit anyway. “Mr Rogers.”

“Mr Rogers,” the man repeated. “Welcome, all of you.” He gestured for them to be seated. Sat down himself on the other side of the desk. “Now, before you see Sergeant Barnes, there are a few things I wish to warn you about.”

Rebecca reached out and slipped her hand into Steve’s. As they sat there listening to the horrors that had happened to the man they both loved most in the world, they held on to each other tight.

Many times, the man in the white coat said the word _torture._ He said it as though it were merely a word, and not a blow that landed heavy in the hearts of those to whom he spoke.

-

The man in the white coat showed them upstairs after making it inescapably clear that Bucky may not remember them, recognise them, or even respond to them at all. Some days, he said, Bucky was close to normal, though confused about his surroundings; some days he was practically catatonic.

Only the man didn’t say ‘Bucky’, of course. He said ‘Mr Barnes’ when he was paying attention. Slipped up and said ‘the patient’ when he wasn’t. It made Steve’s skin crawl. He bit his tongue.

-

It was him.

Different, but – Steve would know him anywhere. No matter what changed. Steve would know him, he was certain, by sight, by sound, by smell. By touch, by taste. He would know Bucky in another universe, know him at the end of the world, know him deaf, blind, know him if a day came where he knew nothing else. Steve knew it was him the moment he entered the room.

Bucky didn’t lift his head. He sat upright but with his head slightly bowed, his hand on his lap, his eyes half-lidded and gazing at something a thousand miles away that Steve knew then he would never see. He’d seen eyes like that before, though; they were in the pictures he drew. They were in his dreams.

The left sleeve of his faded pyjamas was pinned to the shoulder where his arm stopped now, and he looked so much smaller without it, though he was still just as broad across the chest – broader, perhaps, even, than when Steve had last seen him. He looked so different it was blurring Steve’s last memories of him. He clung to them deseperately.

Behind the hair falling across his face he was so pale, like something had drained all the colour out of him. His ash-white face was unshaven. His hair was too long, limp and unwashed, untidy. Cuts below his left eye. Along the bone of his cheek.

Steve hadn’t ever seen him like that before. Unkempt like that. He always kept himself so neat, so nice and tidy and carefully groomed. Even the handful of times he’d been too sick to do it himself he’d let Steve keep him nice – he’d sat across his lap and shaved his stubble for him when he’d had the flu, even though it took forever because they had to stop and let him throw up. He’d combed his hair for him. Kissed his smooth damp cheeks after, teased him softly about being pretty. But Bucky had never been vain. Just taken care of himself.

It hurt to see him like this now, knowing how much he would hate it. Knowing how bad it had to be, for him to – but Steve already knew how bad it was. The man in the white coat had made that quite clear.

“James?”

Bucky’s mother had moved to stand before him, bend towards him – she had her own hands clasped tightly in front of her, like she was afraid to touch him. His eyes flicked towards her, then away again. He didn’t lift his head.

“It’s me, James, sweetheart, it’s your mother.”

Her voice was trembling; Steve could hardly bear it, Becca neither; she was still gripping his hand, standing close beside him, her shoulder pressing into his shoulder so he could feel her trembling, too.

For a while she and Rebecca spoke to him softly, and his eyes would move, but his mouth wouldn’t, his hand wouldn’t, even his face wouldn’t change. Steve stood back and watched as if in a nightmare, feeling sicker every moment, not quite daring to move, not quite daring to speak.

Here was Bucky, right in front of him. Here was Bucky, alive, and so close. So close, but still too far for even his mother to reach him. What hope did Steve have?

-

An orderly came by after an indeterminable, excrutiating stretch of time must have passed, though Steve hardly marked it, and let them know that they ought shortly to leave. Leave, and he hadn’t even spoken? He hadn’t even tried?

“Do you think I could—” he said quickly, to Rebecca and Mrs Barnes as they gathered themselves, and he could see them trying not to show how much it hurt. “A moment, just—with him—please?”

Bucky’s mother looked hesitant, taken aback, even, but Rebecca took her by the arm and guided her to the door without speaking.

And then they were alone.

Steve crossed the room to where the man he loved more than anything else sat waiting.

If you’re like this forever, Steve thought, if this is how you are now, and never again anything more, I’m still going to love you. If you never know me, if you never say my name again, I’m going to love you just like always. I will ask for nothing from you, and I will give you everything I have.

Softly, with his heart barely beating, he said, “Bucky?”

Bucky lifted his head as if towards the sun.

“Steve?”

All his strength all but left him. Steve went to his knees. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

Bucky’s face came alive slowly, as if from a dream; his eyes were round with disbelief. “ _Steve_.”

Without thinking, without hardly caring if it was the right thing to do Steve took his hand and pressed it between his own – that hand that he’d held until the train pulled them apart, that had he wished he’d never stopped holding, wished he’d never let go. Why had he ever, why had he ever ever ever let go.

“It’s me. It’s me, I’m here, I’m here.” He wanted to do more, ached for it, wanted to take Bucky in his arms and crush him to him, as close as he could, hold on to him and not ever let him go again, he’d die before he let him go again.

But the last thing Steve wanted to do was hurt him, so he held his hand instead.

“It’s been a while, Steve,” Bucky was murmuring – he was there, lucid, but he sounded a little far away at the same time.

Steve’s heart was beating hard, as though he’d just come back to life. “I know,” he said, “I’m sorry. I—you—how are you?”

It was a stupid question. He just wanted to say _something._

Bucky’s mouth turned down. His eyes became anxious. “I want to go home,” he said. He sounded like a child. If he could have Steve would’ve taken him right then, just as he was, bundled him into Mrs Barnes’ car and started driving. “I don’t like it much here, Steve, and I don’t think they like me much either.”

“Don’t worry, pal,” Steve told him, squeezing his fingers, feeling him squeeze back and feeling like he was almost dying from not being able to kiss him. Even just his hand. If he could only kiss his hand. “We’ll get you home soon.”

-

“We have to get him away from there.” Rebecca was pacing Sam’s living room floor, hands in her own hair, fingers pressing so hard into her scalp that her knuckles were white. “I can’t bear him being in that place, all alone, I can’t bear it.”

Her words echoed Steve’s own thoughts to the letter, though he could never have voiced them as she was, had never been so good at sharing his feelings – perhaps it was something in the Barnes blood, this capacity for outpourings of emotion, which managed somehow never to be excessive or melodramatic, just a sincere and earnest expression of what could no longer be kept in.

The days since that first visit to the facility where Bucky was being kept had been excruciating. Steve had barely slept, barely eaten. Every moment apart was agony – his heart he’d thought was lost had been found again, but now every time he left that place it stayed there without him, left behind with Bucky, so that place in his chest, when they weren’t together, was still empty. At night he lay awake restless, sure he could feel it beating there, all the way across the city.

“We have to get him home.”

The problem was, where the hell was home, now? Steve hated himself bitterly for leaving the apartment. The place that would have been most familiar for Bucky to come back to, and it was no longer theirs. He’d even tried calling up Mr Murphy, asked if it was still empty from him to move back in – Murphy had laughed down the line and all but told him where to shove it. There was the Barnes’ house, but –

“He talks to her like he barely knows her. His own mother.” Rebecca half-lay weeping now in Susie’s arms, and this grief, it was almost harder to see than that when they’d believed him to be dead. At least then, Steve supposed, they’d been able to think he might be at peace. But this… “How could they do it?” Susie did her best to comfort her, though her eyes were red too. But there was no comfort to be had, from something like this. “What kind of monster do you have to be, to do that to another human being?”

At first it seemed naïve, that desperate question, how could they. Because it’s war, Steve thought, and in war that’s what men do.

But to think on it, she was right. War was one thing. In war men did what they had to. But to destroy someone so thoroughly he could look his mother in the face and see a stranger – surely that was beyond the capacity of men. Surely that took a monster.

She was afraid, Becca said, that going back to his mother’s house would make things worse for Bucky. Steve knew she didn’t say it lightly, or because she didn’t want him there – he could see how badly she wanted him there. It was in the way her hands shook, it was in the way she cast around the room sometimes, distracted – he could see it because it was in him too. Every fibre of his being longed for Bucky, every moment.

Later, when she had calmed a little, Becca spoke to Steve alone.

“Listen. When he – when they wrote, the first time, to say that he –” She faltered, and Steve nodded, having no desire to make her say the words. Briefly, she looked relieved, before her face focused again. She was looking him straight in the eyes. “They sent some money, his money, I guess – I still have it, never spent it, I want you to use it to help find a place.”

She was speaking quickly, almost as though she were giving orders. Steve listened with his heart beating too fast, as now it always did, as it had done for days.

“It’s not all that much,” she was saying, “but it should help, and if I can pull together more I will. I think – I think it might be best to look for some place out of Brooklyn, out of the city. Somewhere quiet.” 

Steve faltered for half a moment. Leaving Brooklyn – he could hardly imagine being anywhere else. Giving up Brooklyn – but then, compared to what Bucky had given up…

“He said,” Steve looked down at his hands, thin and trembling a little. He trembled often these days, he was carrying so much tension. “In his last letter, he said we should go away somewhere.” Looked back up at her, with her eyes so dark and sincere and familiar, those eyes she shared with her brother. When they were younger they’d almost looked like twins. “But, Becca you’re his _family_ – he should be with you – ”

Jaw clenched tight, eyes wet, she shook her head. “You’re his family too, Steve. And he – he knows you. You’re the one he needs to be with, just now.” She sat back, drew a deep breath. “Take the money, find somewhere. I’ll visit, help out as much as I can, just – please. Get him away from there. Get him home.”

-

After she went, Steve went into his room and with an effort that strained his shoulders, lifted the edge of his mattress to find the collection of unopened envelopes he’d been storing there for weeks. He gathered them up, set them on top of the blankets instead, surveyed them for a moment before selecting one at random to open up. He wasn’t expecting much, but if there were even a few dollars in each, it would be something.

-

“Sam?”

Steve stood in the living room doorway, with a fistful of bills and a look of disbelief. Sam looked up from the sofa.

“Sam, there’s – there’s gotta be hundreds of dollars here.”

One of Sam’s eyebrows lifted – he smiled just a little, with just the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, that’s right. You never counted?”

“No, I…” Steve was shaking his head a little. “You said you were taking money for bills.”

“I was,” Sam told him, standing now. He went slowly to where Steve was standing holding the cash a little towards him, as if some kind of offering. “People like your work, Steve.”

“People?”

“Yeah. Some went to publications, you know, magazines, some to private collectors. If you don’t believe me, I kept receipts.”

Bewildered, Steve’s gaze went from the money in his hand, to Sam’s face, back again. “This can’t be right, Sam. Look, if this is – I dunno, _charity_ , then – ”

With a soft laugh, Sam clapped him gently on the shoulder. Steered him towards the sofa to sit down. “Rogers, you don’t really think I’d be giving you money out my own pocket, for you to hide under your bed and never spend, like some kinda squirrel?” He shook his head, in a way that seemed fond. “That money’s yours, man.”

Sitting there, staring at Sam in open disbelief, it was more than Steve could quite process. The money – it wasn’t enough to buy a place outright, but it enough for a solid deposit on somewhere, he thought, somewhere decent too. Somewhere for him and Bucky – somewhere safe and quiet. Somewhere he could get better.

His voice came out rough when he managed next to speak. Tight around the lump in his throat. “Thank you, Sam.”

Quietly, Sam squeezed his shoulder. Steve felt the press of his thumb against his collarbone. “Hey,” he said. “You got nothin’ to thank me for.”

“Yeah,” Steve told him, leaning just a little closer to him. “I do.”

-

Every day that passed without a home to bring Bucky back to felt like a year. Searching for a place consumed every waking moment of Steve’s life – unless he’d entirely exhausted his list of relators to call, it took a combined and concerted effort from Rebecca and Sam to make him stop even to sleep.

When he wasn’t searching he was going to see Bucky every chance he got. Rebecca would drive them when she wasn’t at work; Mrs Barnes’ visits had become less and less frequent. They ended in tears every time. Steve did his best not to blame her.

Bucky still knew him, but it was clear that something had changed. His gaze was so often unfocused; he didn’t always notice when Steve entered the room until he said his name; often he didn’t seem sure where he was. Sometimes it was as though no time had passed; he’d greet Steve cheerfully, ask about his day, though those moods would never last. A few minutes at most, before he seemed to remember they weren’t at home, and a shadow would pass over his face, and he’d become quiet and anxious again.

He spoke very little. The man in the white coat had made it clear that his memory was damaged, but it was hard to tell to what extent when he barely said a word. He knew Steve, he knew Rebecca, he knew his mother too, though the way he spoke to her was a little detached, a little hazy.

Steve had explained to him about the apartment, tried to at least. Told him, “I know you must be itching to get home, Buck, but I gotta find a new place – I just couldn’t keep up with the rent, after you left, I’m sorry – ”

Bucky had turned to him, frowning, and said, “I left?”

“Y – yeah, pal.” Steve’s voice had stuck in his throat. “Remember? You went away.”

Bucky had said, “Oh,” quietly. Dropped his gaze.

Sometimes Steve would explain it to him again, remind him how he’d been called up, how he’d got on a train, and he was here now because he’d been hurt, but he was getting better. Sometimes Bucky would remember, and flush with bewildered embarrassment that he’d somehow lost track of that information. Sometimes his face would scrunch up like hearing it was causing him pain, he’d close his eyes and turn away, and Steve would change the subject, because he couldn’t stand to see him like that.

Because he couldn’t say it there, where he would be overheard,Steve did his best to remind Bucky that he loved him in other ways – pressing his hand, holding his gaze, promising him that everything would be okay, that he’d be out of there real soon. Tried to slip it between what he could say, hoped that Bucky would hear it – but he wasn’t sure that he did.

-

Eventually, Steve put down a deposit on a house.

A _house._ He hadn’t lived in a house since he was six years old. Hadn’t lived in a place he didn’t have to climb two flights of stairs to reach since he could remember.

It even had a garden. A house, with a garden. And a front door that would be theirs and only theirs.

He used to daydream about living in a house with Bucky. Making a real home with him, somewhere with more than two rooms and windows that didn’t leak, a bathroom with a real tub that was plumbed in and didn’t have to be filled up from the kettle, didn’t double as the kitchen table. Never really thought it would happen, though. Never thought it would be him signing the papers on his own.

And he did go alone, without Rebecca – didn’t want it to look like she was buying a house with some fella and them not being married. Maybe he’d fiddled his proof of income a little, written out a couple of more up-to-date receipts for a couple of drawings, just to make the cash flow seem a little more even. Once he got Bucky there, he promised himself, once they were settled, he’d start working again. This gap, it was only temporary, only while he had to attend to more important things.

The house was a little way out of the city, past the suburbs, on its own at the end of a long and quiet street. It was lonely, but in Steve’s mind, lonely meant safe. Meant they were away from loud noises and prying eyes, away from anyone who might question a pair of young guys sharing a house with each other and no one else. Saying they were brothers only worked so well.

Although, he supposed, now that Bucky was—now that he had his injury—was it so far fetched that he might have a brother who he lived with, who cared for him? They looked nothing alike, but siblings didn’t always. Hell, he could even say they were adopted.

Whatever it took. He’d say anything, do anything, if it kept Bucky safe.

The house was small for a house, but after Steve’s apartment and even after Sam’s – which had been bigger and smarter by far – it was practically a palace. Two bedrooms – they’d always said two, for the sake of appearances and, teasing, so that neither of them would have to sleep on the couch if they got sick of one another. A pokey little kitchen made separate from the living-dining. A bathroom with a tub. A little fenced-in square of overgrown backyard.

Steve put the key in the lock with his fingers tremling.

_This grand old house of ours – you gonna carry me over the threshold, then?_

_’course I am._

_Yeah?_

_Yeah. Someone’s gotta make an honest man out of you, Mr Rogers. Might as well be me._

Alone, he turned the key, and closed his eyes as he stepped through the door of his new home.

**Author's Note:**

> comments very appreciated 💕


End file.
